


Red

by dregsghafa



Series: from eden [1]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: F/M, Kate being a lil flirty, Richie being a nerd, Seth being the walking talking embodiment of guilt, Xibalban hair dye is a thing i guess, well seth is barely even in this im so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 09:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11102151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dregsghafa/pseuds/dregsghafa
Summary: Richie doesn't understand, but then Kate looks up at him through her lashes and he feels something ancient in his bones. It's like he's felt this before in some distant past and from some distant tomorrow.





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> hello there! this is my first ever fic that i'm posting on ao3 and honestly i don't know what this is. i tried to make a fluff and this is all i ended up making. anyway, leave comments and stuff thank u to my friend who refused to give me her user for being my beta.

     Richie finishes up his dinner, another skill to pile up in his growing collection. Cook up a mean barbecue.

     It's unfair really, how a racist pig like his dinner could barbecue like a god and at the same time have the capability to let lose six bullets towards his new neighbor's house just because said neighbor was black.

     Richie wipes the blood away from the sides of his mouth with his sleeves; though it doesn’t really matter, since most of his collar is soaked red.

     He makes his way back to their motel room in Houston, gets inside, sees Seth passed out on the couch and the door to the bathroom ajar. He can see Kate's reflection from the small opening.

     Slowly, he creeps nearer and sees her staring at herself in the mirror, red hair wet, leaving trails at the front of her shirt, her brows furrowed in a silent question.

     Her hands reach to the middle of her collarbones, and he remembers how there used to be a silver cross at the spot. It was stark against her skin as her lungs bargained for air, she told him to go to hell. 

     There’s this look on her face he's been seeing so much lately. Emptiness, longing, a string pulled too tight on the verge of breaking all at once.

     He stands in front of the door and gives it a knock, the expression on Kate's face fades away. Richie feels some sort of relief.

     She opens the door further, staring at him. He stares right back.

      "Your hair looks like blood when it's wet," he says, eyeing it under the yellow lighting of the bathroom.

      "Does it make you hungry?" she bites back a bit too harsh.

 

**\---**

     The smoke rises up in the air, smelling like meat with a hint of sweetness. They're at Uncle Eddie's old place which he and Seth never had the heart to sell. They've been planning a job somewhere nearby, the place saved them a bit of money, not that they needed to. Now, they didn’t have to share between two beds and a couch.

     Kate sits on a table that's half out in the sun and half covered by the shade of the porch roof, her feet up on a stool, sipping on an iced tea. She's facing the sun and for the first time in a while, she looks peaceful, like the way she used. Or how Richie thought she should look. He never knew her before anyway.

     Richie's lathers a second layer of barbecue sauce on the ribs, a light blue apron over his slacks and shirt dress, the grill safely moved under the shade. Seth strides back on the porch, a picture in hand.

     "Hey, Richie," he says with a grin, sits across Kate and flashes him the picture. "Remember when you had braces?"

     Richie spares it a glance, rolls his eyes. It's a picture of them side by side, Seth in jersey shorts and Richie in a Star Wars shirt, his arms around his brother. He hears Kate's laughter as he shakes his head.

     "As a matter of fact I do," he turns the ribs over, lathers it with sauce. "Even grinded my teeth.”

     Seth laughs a hearty one before he takes a sip of his beer.

     "Who would have thought these losers would turn into you guys?" Kate takes a closer look at the picture with a smile.

     "What, you thought that we were morally questionable since birth?" Seth asks, matches Kate's smile.

     "A little bit," she shrugs.

     "Well, Seth wasn't an asshole till high school," Richie places the ribs on a plate and cuts it up

     "And you?" Kate presses.

     "I don't kill for the pleasure... Most of the time."

     "What _do_ you kill for?"

     Richie places the plate on the table and takes his place on the shaded side of the table. Kate lights up even more.

     "God, I've been craving barbecue since Houston," she tells them as she grabs a piece.

 

**\---**

 

     Richie asks Kate to draw the curtains so he can watch Gone Girl in the living room. He's put off watching this one for a while. Too busy, too tired, never saw a perfect moment for it. But Uncle Eddie has a DVD player and Kate asks to watch with him.

     She sits beside him, hugging a throw pillow on the couch with a puzzled look on her face already, a bowl of chips between them. Seth's gone, left last night, didn't tell them where.

     "I think you'd do that," Kate tells him after Amy hits her own eye with a hammer.

     Richie points to the screen with an incredulous look on his face. Kate nods, a smile slowly creeps on her face

     "You've already faked your death and your brother's. That's a body count up from her."

     "Can't argue with that," he says with a shrug in agreement.

     "She reminds me of you."

     "I got the implication."

     "I kinda like her," she pops a chip in her mouth and watches Amy in her big, black sunglasses.

     Richie loses focus after that. He has to re-watch the entire thing.

**\---**

 

     Seth doesn't come back till the afternoon.

     "Where have you been?" Kate asks.

     "Got some burgers," he swings the paper bag in front of her and places it on the table and quickly walks to his room.

     "That long?"

     "Then, I guess they're really good burgers," he shouts from the threshold of the bedroom.

     Richie knows Seth heard Kate say 'I don't forgive you' in her sleep again. He doesn't say anything to either of them.

     Kate sighs, guilt obvious on her face.

**\---**

 

     "You know, you're too good at making people angry," Kate tells Richie as she watches him get blood stains off his shirt in the sink.

     "Where did that come from?" He asks. He didn't even know she was there.

     "Just an observation," she explains. "When we're doing a job, you make people angry first and then you get what you want. I don't get it."

     Richie thinks for a moment, lets his shirt flop into a puddle of bubbles.

    "It's easy," he says each word slowly. "To connect people's dots. It's just not easy for me to understand the dots."

    Kate has a look on her face like she's piecing glimpses of him together to form something she can understand, like a math problem, like a crime scene.

    "Here," she gets up and stands beside him. "Let me help you."

    She scrubs, scrubs, scrubs till the water turns red and the shirt turns white.

 

**\---**

    They're back on the road and it's back to motel rooms and shitty diners.

    Richie doesn't tell Kate that he sees her shaking from nightmares every time he comes back from hunting. Sometimes she repeats words like 'I'm sorry" or "I don't forgive you" while she frantically moves around in her bed. Tonight, it's the former.

    He lies on the other bed, her back turned to him. She forgot to turn off the lamplight.

    Her shoulders shake under the orange sheets for a few seconds before she says 'I'm sorry' again. He counts ten of her plea for forgiveness.

    He wants to do something like calm her down, lay next to her, rub her forearms till her shaking ceases. But Richie doesn't understand gentleness. He doesn't know how to execute the actions that come with the word, he's afraid it might come off as something else.

    So he watches her under the yellow lamplight until he counts fifteen pleas.

   "Richie," she breathes out and the world is still as she gasps and wakes up with a jolt.

   Her eyes see his.

   There's fear in them, her brows are arched in anticipation of something.

   Richie finally turns his back to her. He thinks he can give her this at least. A little bit of dignity, a pretense that no one sees her suffering.

   The bed squeaks as she lies back down. He can feel her eyes at the back of his neck.

 

**\---**

 

     In the morning, while Seth is in the shower, Richie sits across Kate as she eats her cereal. He puts his glasses on and folds his arms over his chest, expectant because he doesn't know how to have a conversation like this.

     Kate does an awful job at ignoring him.

     He leans forward, holds his hands together on the table, waits a little longer. She eyes him for a few seconds before she pushes her bowl forward.

     "What?" She asks, eyebrows knit harshly.

     "What's what, Katie-cakes?" There's no question mark in his intonation.

     "Just," she sighs heavily. "Get on with it, Richie."

     "Then, just get on with it, Kate."

     The pause feels like an eternity, he doesn't mind.

    "Sometimes," she begins. "I remember all the things she did when she took over and I can't stop remembering. I tell myself it's me now but everytime she looked at herself or when she caught a reflection, I saw me too."

    Her eyes land on his hands on the table.

    "Sometimes, I can't tell if this is who I was or who I am."

    Richie doesn't understand, but then Kate looks up at him through her lashes and he feels something ancient in his bones. It's like he's felt this before in some distant past and from some distant tomorrow.

    Richie doesn't understand but, he wants to try.

 

**\---**

 

     He buys two boxes of brown hair dye that night right before he stalked his dinner, a hairdresser who was rumored to sell girls into prostitution.

     The rumors were true.

 

**\---**

     The plastic bag lands on the table with a soft thud in front of Kate's bowl of cereal.

     "What's this?" she asks, the tip of her spoon on her lips.

     "For you," he replies simply.

     "Why?"

     Richie answers with a shrug and goes to the space where the beds are.

     Kate doesn't touch it till two weeks later.

     Richie sees her through the ajar bathroom door again. This time he sees her reading the back of the box.

     He grabs a chair from the table set and pushes the door open. Kate looks at him with wide eyes. The chair barely fits in the tiny space but they make do. She sits down and he steals the box from her grasp  
  

    "This is stupid," she says as she stares at her reflection. Richie feels a pang of hurt. "Do you even know how to dye hair?"

    "You'd be surprised."

    "Is it gonna work?"

    "Why won't it work?"

    "I don't know," she purses her lips. "My hair grows out red now."

    "Then, let's find out if Xibalban hair dyes are as good as their blades."

    He retrieves the plastic gloves from the box and begins to work. Kate looks scared as much as Richie looks focused.

    By the time they finish, Seth has woken up.

    "What _is_ going _on_?" He asks, annoyed, rubs sleep away from his eyes. Then he sees Kate with her hair that looks like melted chocolate. "Kate," he breathes out, barely audible.

    "Richie got the shade just right," she tells him and scrunches her hair with a towel stained brown.

    "How'd you do that, Richie?"

    "I'm a man of many talents, brother."

 

**\---**

     Kate doesn't spend too much time in the shower anymore but she still cries in her sleep. Richie figures it's better than nothing.

 

**\---**

     The dye completely fades away after a week.

     Kate leaves the bathroom door all the way open, sits on a chair and waits for Richie to come back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr! hit me up at dregsghafa.tumblr.com


End file.
